For those relying on OpenVPN for your virtual private networking (VPN) needs, one of the most exciting innovations in recent times besides transitioning to the WireGuard alternative is the OpenVPN DCO kernel driver. This “data channel offload” driver has the potential to provide significant performance advantages over the current OpenVPN performance.
The OpenVPN DCO kernel driver for Linux can yield significant performance benefits albeit it’s been a long time in development and has missed out on past opportunities like the hope of having it mainlined back for the Linux v6.14 cycle. But it’s still moving along and this week brought the 25th round of working on this kernel driver.
Posted this week was the 25th round of revising the OpenVPN Data Channel Offload driver. This newest attempt brings a number of bug fixes, removing obsolete or otherwise now unneeded code, and a number of other code alterations. There doesn’t appear to be any real difference on the OpenVPN DCO performance itself, which was previously shown by OpenVPN Inc as:
It does appear that work on the openvpn-dco driver is slowly winding down so perhaps there is hope of finally seeing it with the Linux v6.16 kernel this summer. Those wanting to test out the 25th version of these OpenVPN kernel driver patches can find them on the LKML.
